This was the first time Gavil had failed to be the first to produce a cigarette lighter at someone’s request. The lighter that had been successfully found and offered by someone else caught his eye. ‘Where did you find that?’ he asked, checking to see if he still had his own in his pocket. ‘Just […]

Guru Dan Fennel ambles across the maple floorboards of Yoga Sky Studio. His elegant toes scatter cushions and stroke the cheek of a young disciple, supine on her mat. Dan once travelled from Madras to Seoul on foot. On the way, he threaded the following beads into his string of malas: dharma transmission, monk ordination, […]

Eve of D-Day They were so, so young, but to Sheila, squinting out from the stage into the bright lights rigged up in the tent, they looked already old. Every show she did, they looked the same. It was hard to make out faces, peering through the dust-speckled beams of the spotlights, the generators rattling, […]

When he asked me if I was the writer I just laughed. You know the laugh. You once described it as drier than a corked bottle of Chardonnay and no less unpleasant. But he persevered, told me he had a story for me. What is it about people and writers? Would they tell a painter […]

Custard Walker lived small and private, her life pent up inside self-made borders, pitted by absent dreams and a tough reality.   Custard Walker flickered with a worn beauty, her hair uncurling with time and its red fire fading gently into grey. Her eyes had paled to the colour of lime marmalade. But both eyes […]

Helen Sanderson is originally from Nottingham. She studied English Literature at the University of East Anglia and the University of Nottingham before becoming a gardener. She currently lives and works in South London. She started writing after doing an English Literature PGDip and realising she wanted to be writing fiction rather than writing about fiction […]

Alice Jolly is the author of A Saint in Swindon, which will be published by Fairlight Books in April 2020. Alice is an established author and educator in creative writing at Oxford University. Her most recent novel Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile was published in 2018 by Unbound. It was runner up for the Rathbones Folio […]

Svetlana Lavochkina is a Ukrainian-born novelist, poet and translator, residing in Germany. Her work has been widely published in the US and Europe, appearing in AGNI, New Humanist, POEM, Witness, Straylight, Circumference, Superstition Review, Sixfold, Drunken Boat and elsewhere. She lives in Leipzig with her husband and two sons. She teaches English at a Waldorf […]

John Millard spent twenty-five years as a journalist – as a reporter on local newspapers, then as a reporter and feature writer on national papers and magazines. He studied English literature at Oxford University as a mature student. He now works in local government as a magazine editor and PR/marketing officer. He lives in a […]

Sean Coffey is a lately retired former lecturer in electronic engineering. While he was born in the UK, his Irish parents returned him to the ould sod in 1964. His hobbies include riding fast motorcycles and taking slow walks. He lives beside the sea on the west coast of Ireland, but fears he may soon […]